


Out Of Hell And Into The Light

by your_local_friendly_ghost



Series: Changing Tides [1]
Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, All That Trauma Shit, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, I mean it, Inconsistent chapter lengths, Joseph is ALIVE and (kinda) WELL, M/M, Medication, No Homo : The Fic, Panic Attacks, Post-TEW, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sharing a Bed, Sharing a Room, Slow Build, Suicidal Thoughts, just two guys being dudes you know, me ; taking what i want from the artbook : Joseph Eats Nori, no sex in this one they're coping, oh so fucking hurt, probably inaccurate description of alcohol withdrawal, ruvik is dead and i killed him, sure as hell not tew2-compliant, therefore I am right and THEY are wrong, they're both out of this shit, this thing was written like 9 months before the first tew2 trailer, two men suffering, two men suffering TOGETHER
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 14:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 16,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11968902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/your_local_friendly_ghost/pseuds/your_local_friendly_ghost
Summary: “The two men are like dolls of fabric, cut open in the middle, stuffing spilling out. They found themselves both with a needle on a thread in one of their hands and, somewhere along the way, decided they’d help stitch the other back together – and so, they began.”You can take men out of Hell, but you can't take Hell out of men.Sebastian and Joseph got out of STEM alive, and now, they're just trying to survive.When their brains start creating monsters out of memories, they try to have each other's back.





	1. Alive ?

**Author's Note:**

> this thing was written a while ago, jumped through beta-readers' hands before i decided that Fuck That Noise I Am Stubborn Shit I Wanna Post. my beta-readers if you read this i love you and i'm sorry i'm such a shit.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> settle in for a long adventure folks !

They’re only human at night.  
During the day, they’re ghosts, limbs heavy with plumb in their veins, haunting their own homes and the convenience stores across the street.

They’re only human at night.  
When monsters sit on Joseph’s chest, crushing his lungs as they stare through their cracked masks, the silver tooth of a knife kissing the bump of his Adam’s apple, Joseph is only human as he stays, petrified, a statue with a mouth hanging open in a silent scream and that cannot fight back.

They’re only human at night.  
When Ruvik’s burned tongue narrates how his partner’s body becomes soil for wounds and bleeding fistulas that sprout off his flesh like decaying fungus, Sebastian is only human as he tries to drown the voice in tasteless alcohol and coffee, fighting himself to keep his eyes open, never letting the bony arms of sleep pull him in their nightmarish embrace.

They cannot sleep.  
They cannot rest.

 

Clawed hands tighten around Joseph’s throat and raspy voices sing to his ears “give in, give in”, and every time he thinks he woke up he didn’t, and more monsters are waiting to pull him back into inescapable, ghoulish dreams. When he snaps out of his trance and lays, wide awake, in the dreadful and ominous silence of reality, he tries to drag his body out of his bed and to leave his phantasmagoric torturers in the prison they made of his sheets, only to be reunited as sleep comes.  
It’s almost two in the morning.  
Joseph doesn’t sleep. Joseph doesn’t want to go to sleep.  
He feels like a kid refusing to go to bed to watch TV, except this time there’s nothing on the channels. There are monsters in his bed, waiting for him.

 

Monstrous moans are heard behind the walls, bodies throwing themselves against the door, and Sebastian holds his gun near his chest, his finger caressing the trigger. He never was a religious man but now he’s praying to whoever would hear him to make them go away. No one is here to listen to him, except Ruvik, who sends more of his minions every time Sebastian begs for them to leave. Sometimes, the defined picture of his partner, distorted in pain, covered in blood and wounds open like mouths on his skin, joining the other monsters taunting him flashes in his mind and Sebastian chokes on this thought.  
There are six bullets in his revolver, he thinks, largely enough to blow his brains out and make it all stop.  
But he doesn’t. He can’t. Something is holding him back, like a hand around his wrist.  
He thinks he dreams the feel of leather against his held-back arm.

 

They can’t escape the traps their own brains set up in the every corner of their minds.  
They can’t sleep, they can’t think. Silence is deadly, noise hosts vicious voices.  
“You need to rest and recover”, they have been said before being sent home.  
They hold up their phones and type the Chief’s number. Her voice scolds them but they beg, terror in their throat, to be let back in the force.  
They need normality.  
They crave normality.  
Normality and peace.

 

 

 


	2. Day One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> on the two men's first day back, they realize nothing is right.

On the first day back, it's been two weeks since the incident has been officially classified.  
Two weeks since they got out of Beacon just to be thrown in another hospital with blinding white lights, the smell of disinfectant and cleaning products sticking to the nurses and doctors’ skin like an overpowering perfume.  
Two weeks since they felt the invasive hands of the nurses and doctors palping every inch of their bodies, looking for injuries, wounds, fractures **(not seeing the ugly lashes and blue lesions on their brains)** , prying their mouths open to check their throats **(only the taste of blood and guts lingered)** , putting them under X-Rays **(that cannot detect the marks of hell)** , scolding them for their caffeine, smoking, drinking addictions **(without knowing they would only get worse from there)**.  
Two weeks since they’ve been let free and sent back home to deal with their own personal behemoths on their own.  
Two weeks since they curled up on themselves to grit their teeth and swallow their sobs.  
Two weeks since they started feeling like death.  
Two weeks since they started not sleeping.

 

The Chief, with her strong and silvery voice, made it clear : they’re not working outside. They’re not getting out of the building, not going to run after suspects with guns and aggressive teeth, not diving into bloodbaths before their skins are cleansed of it (you mustn't release hurt beasts into the wild).

 

Sebastian feels like he’s driving on automatic. His knuckles are turning white from gripping the wheel so hard, the bones of his jaw are showing more than usual from gritting his teeth, but he can’t feel anything. His body is a doll made of dirty clothes, his head floats above his shoulders and his unfocused, red, dry eyes are staring through the grey dress of the town.  
Parking his car on the lot in front of the police office, Sebastian notices Joseph's. A faint spark of hope for a return to normal starts burning in his chest.

Getting out of his car and walking up the three steps to the front door, dragging his heavy legs as he tries to look as human as possible, he's already imagining Joseph welcoming him, his eyes barely leaving the papers he's holding but pointing Sebastian a steaming cup of coffee.  
“Good morning, Sebastian,” Joseph would say. And Sebastian would smile and the fifteen nights he’s had in company of beasts with teeth and spikes and barbed wire where they’re not supposed to be would be forgotten.

As he pushes the door to the room he and Joseph share, he almost stops in his tracks. Joseph is here, sitting limply in his chair, holding his cup of coffee with two hands. His head falls slightly on his left shoulder and he's staring blankly ahead of him. Sebastian notices also a slight back-and-forth rocking in his partner's figure.  
Joseph looks too pale, cheeks hollow and devoid of color.  
Slowly approaching his numbed partner, Sebastian tries to call his name softly, careful not to startle him.  
The voice that comes out of the older man’s mouth is croaky, hushed and so, so tired.

“Joseph ?”

The younger man seems to snap out of his daydream and turns his head to look at Sebastian, his moves robotic and uneven. The distressed look on his face fades to reveal a tiny smile.

“Oh... hello, Seb.”

There's a cold silence during which Sebastian takes his coat off and puts it up on the hanger. He observes his partner carefully, and notices his grey skin, the deep circles under his black, blank eyes and the deep worried line on his forehead that usually doesn’t carve his skin  
like that. When he walks to his desk, his eyes start searching for something, he forgets what.

“Ah,” Joseph’s voice cracks in, “sorry, I... I didn't get your coffee”, he admits in a croaky voice.  
“It's okay”, Sebastian reassures . “I'll get it myself, don't worry.”

Joseph offers another tight smile and takes another sip.  
Sebastian notices Joseph's index flexing mechanically – the automatic gesture of pulling a trigger.  
Looking down at his own hands, he can see his finger doing the same.

 

On the night following the first day back, monsters are unleashing.

They're crazy and violent, groaning louder at Sebastian's door, angry to be ignored for a day.  
" Shut up ! " Sebastian yells as he arranges his dirty, sweat-stained pillows on his bed.  
A creature shrieks and throws its body against the door. Sebastian can hear the metallic spikes stuck in its head grit against the wood.  
And fuck, Sebastian curses internally, now he has to piss. He sighs deeply, trying to prepare himself to go through the walking nightmares in the corridor to reach the bathroom.  
He cocks his gun, finger ready on the trigger, and unlocks the door.

He sees no one out of his room.  
There are only shadows in the hallway, furniture and moonlight.  
He turns the light on. His eyes can't make out any silhouette nearby, but he can still hear them. Whispers like the hiss of a snake, hushed voices that articulate words he cannot understand.  
Sebastian runs to the bathroom, probing the area with the tip of his gun before locking the door behind him.  
He puts his weapon on the edge of the washbasin and walks to the toilet bowl, his worried gaze running in the room like a crazy animal.

He’s drying his freshly washed hands on his sweatpants when he walks, as slowly as he can to put off the second he’ll have to step out of the bathroom, to the door.  
He slowly unlocks it, gun like a bodyguard before him.  
The corridor is silent.  
No more voices. No more hisses. Only the peaceful humming of the night, the cars driving outside, the ticking of a distant clock.  
This is too weird, he thinks, before realizing that no, it is not.  
This quiescence is what is to be expected from an apartment at night.

He walks back to his room, still curiously checking every nook and cranny he can see, looking for monsters in hiding waiting to jump on him and tear his flesh apart.  
He still locks the door behind him before walking to the bed. He puts his revolver on his bedstand and carefully slides under the blanket.  
He lays awake on his back, his brain slowly letting go of pieces of anxiety as no one comes speaking through the night.  
A loud and long sigh of relief runs through him and he catches himself smiling.  
He rolls on his side to be more comfortable and let his heavy eyelids fall like velvet curtains on his bloodshot eyeballs.

"I live here too, now. You can't banish me away."  
Sebastian's eyes snap open and he yells at the ceiling. His hand grabs his gun and points it at the door as claws start scratching the wood. They came back.  
"Shut up ! Shut up ! Get lost !" he screams.  
A monster growls and bangs its head against the wall.  
Sebastian throws his gun to the other side of the room in rage and buries his head under his pillow. If the cushion could smother him in his sleep, he thinks, it would help greatly.  
Groaning and moaning begins once again and there's no way to make them shut up.  
Ruvik's laugh sends a cold, dreadful shiver down his spine and he thinks, he was so fucking dumb to throw his gun.

Suddenly, he feels so unsafe, so vulnerable. He curls on himself so the blanket covers all of his body – like a child would do to protect themselves from the monsters under their bed.  
Sebastian's hand rattles through the drawer on his bedside table to get a hold on a bottle of whiskey. He opens it and brings the neck to his lips, taking a long sip. The ethanol burns the inside of his cheeks, throat and stomach, as if the mucosa had been peeled of its flesh and the nerves were left for the world to set ablaze, and hammers his head with a loud smack that has him dizzy.  
Eventually, the alcohol muffles the groans, the moans and Ruvik's voice, and Sebastian finds himself drifting into a heavy, cottony sleep. A last glance at his bedside clock shows him "2:03".  
Time feels as if it is swimming through molasses, losing itself in the clawed grips of Ruvik's grotesque creations and fighting to escape.

More monsters welcome Sebastian as he washes up on the black shores of his nightmares.

 

 


	3. Day Three

On the third day back, Joseph has a breakdown.

Twirling his pen around his fingers, Sebastian noticed out of the corner of his eye, through the hazy blur his sleep-deprived brain made him swim through, Joseph paralyzed in a scared and defensive state, one of his hand ready to grab the gun at his side.  
Suddenly, he stands up, almost bucking his chair off its feet, and runs off.

“Hey, wait ! Joseph !” Sebastian calls after him.

The door slamming behind him, Joseph seems to have run to the bathroom.

A stroke of worry running through Sebastian, he abruptly stands, the weight of his drowsy body almost pushing him back into his chair, and goes after his distressed partner. Seeing him run through the corridors, his other colleagues look at him with round and curious eyes, an inquisitive whisper spreading from person to person like ink in water.

Arriving in the men's bathroom, Sebastian notices that Joseph isn't standing at a sink like he expected him to be, and has locked himself in one of the stalls.

Thanking god for the fact that the bathroom is empty, Sebastian comes closer to the door he can see Joseph's feet under, and crouches, feeling it makes him less intimidating.

“Joseph ?” he whispers, “Joseph, hey, what happened ?”

He hears a shaky sigh, as if his partner had been crying, and a croaking, hushed voice comes through.

“Se... Sebastian ?”  
“It's me,” he assures. “Are you okay ? What happened ?”  
“I saw one of them through the window,” Joseph hiccups, “I saw one of them but I didn't want to shoot it, so I ran away.”

Sebastian doesn't answer right away, astonished, and feeling the paranoia creeping onto his back like a viscid spider.

“One of them ? What are you talking about, Joseph ?” he asks even if he knows, he knows what Joseph is talking about, and he's so worried about him.  
“One of those creatures or whatever they are, just like back in... back when...”

Joseph doesn't finish his sentence and Sebastian is sure he's hearing him crying, and it’s… terrifying. So, so wrong. Sebastian has never seen or heard his partner crying and it feels horrible, knowing that such a calm, composed man can lose it to – to what ? a silhouette his own brain sketched in front of his eyes ?  
He puts one of his hand on the door, as if he could reach Joseph that way.

“Joseph, open the door, please. You'll show me where you saw them.”

Joseph hesitates.

“Please..." Sebastian pleads in a whisper.

He hears Joseph stand up, turn the lock and sit back. Sebastian slowly pushes the door to find Joseph clinging to his gun, holding it against his chest, eyes red and face pale. He closes the door after him for the two of them to get a little intimacy and crouches besides his partner.

“Come on. We'll get back to our office and you'll show me where you saw them,” Sebastian calmly enunciate, “and then, we'll see what we can do about it. Okay ?”

Joseph weakly nods.  
Sebastian takes the gun out of his limp hands to put it back in his holster and helps him up. Joseph stops by the sink, pulling his gloves off to splash his numb face with cold water. Sebastian hears him sigh and turns around to see him dry his face with paper towels, then adjust his glasses on his nose, tie and collar, going from a crying mess with red eyes to the professional, sharp-eyed and proper Joseph Oda everyone here knows.

 

On the way back, people stare at them, some seem to be wanting to ask them what has been going on. They catch side-glances and feel the inquisitive whisper that has been propagating in the office like a heavy fog around them.  
Joseph's fingers ghost at Sebastian's sleeve like a lost child's.

When Sebastian pushes their office's door, Joseph looks ready to grab his gun again, and looks nervously around him.

“So, where did you see the creature ?” Sebastian asks as Joseph steps a little closer to the window.  
“In the middle of the road,” he croaks as his eyes look desperately for the monsters. “Where did it go...?”

Sebastian paces around awkwardly, not knowing how to bring up the fact that the monsters probably weren't real. Well, they are, in a way. In their way. They’re stuck in this paradoxical realm, foggy shadows whose fingers can carve fresh wounds around the men’s throats.  
Sebastian clears his throat.

“Joseph, um... I think that what you saw was just an... some kind of hallucination. That's the only way I can think of it.”

Sebastian feels like a hypocrite saying this ; he can stalk, he who punches his bedroom walls to chase the monsters away. He thinks he’s almost trying to reassure himself by telling his partner this.  
Joseph glances at Sebastian with a scared flash in his eye.

“Are... are you saying that I'm crazy ?” Joseph huffs, and Sebastian hears the oncoming tears twisting his partner's voice.  
“That's not – what I mean is that you – we've seen some pretty traumatic shit back there,” he enunciate while waving the memories off with the back of his hand, “and I think it's very likely that you're experiencing hallucinations as a symptom of some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder or some kind of shit,” he finishes in a breath, trying his best to brush the distressing truth as something casual.

Sebastian eyes at Joseph's drained features.

"… and you also look exhausted. That could have played in too,” he adds.

Joseph nods weakly and bites his lips. A silent, muted anger washes over his face.

" I don't know why I'm like this," he huffs. "I'm not usually that much of a crybaby."

He looks so wrecked, Sebastian can only walk up to him to hold his arm, scared he'll faint.  
The irritation on Joseph's face disappears as quick as it came and he lets out a broken and fake laugh.

“I'm such a fuckup,” he croaks.

Sebastian doesn't let him go.  
Joseph lets out what sounds like a dead, choked sob.

 

 

 


	4. Day Five

On the fifth day back, Sebastian thinks he's going to die.

It starts in the middle of the afternoon, between two sips of lukewarm coffee.

Suddenly, there’s a loud, low noise growing somewhere in the back of his skull, like the muffled screeching of a mad drill.  
Then comes a strident static that has Sebastian covering his ears and standing up to run, and suddenly he’s thinking, it’s just like back there, back then, and he’s going back to this hell, he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t, and he also doesn’t hear Joseph calling his name over the ear-piercing screeching striking him like a powerful wave.  
Sebastian feels like starting screaming too but suddenly the lights are too bright, too white, slicing his eyes like flashes of lightning. He doesn’t know what to do and he feels like he can’t run anywhere, his legs refusing to move.  
Joseph has run up to him and taken hold of his shoulders, but Sebastian can’t hear him, can’t see him, and he feels like throwing up.  
The static and the lights fade out and only is left the low growling like a dark storm rumbling.  
Sebastian is panting, his fingers shaking, and now he can hear Joseph screaming his name.

“Sebastian ! Sebastian, what is happening ? Are you okay ? Sebastian !”

He wants to answer, to tell him he thinks his head is going to explode, tell him he’s going to die.  
Sebastian’s legs give up under his weight and he almost bangs his head against his desk, but Joseph is here to move his partner’s head out of harm’s way and now he’s crouching next to the distressed man, his eyes so full of worry searching for an answer on Sebastian’s face.

Eventually, the low growling dies too, and Sebastian is left shaking and panting, his chest painful and hands trembling up next to his ears.

“Oh god… oh fuck… holy shit…” Sebastian manages when he catches his breath.

Joseph puts back one of Sebastian’s lock behind his ear and takes the man’s shaking hands in his.

“Sebastian ? What happened ? Are you okay ?”

Sebastian’s eyes climb up Joseph’s face to meet a worried gaze.

“You… You didn’t hear that ?”

Joseph shakes his head. Sebastian looks down at his hands, firmly held by Joseph’s.

“A loud, loud noise, and then static, just like when… where…”

He can’t finish his sentence and start choking on nothing but air. One of Joseph’s hand leaves Sebastian’s to rest on his shoulder.

“Hey, it was probably a hallucination,” Joseph explains, his voice soft with sympathy and fatigue. “You’re safe now. You’re okay. It’s okay.”

Sebastian nods and tries to catch his breath once more.

“Yeah… yeah. A hallucination. Yeah.”

Of course it was. It could be nothing else.  
Still, Sebastian keeps feeling the noise in the back of his head, and it feels as real as anything else. The veil that separates this plane of reality and Ruvik's feels thinner, just like it does in the middle of the night, as midnight feeds nightmares and pulls them up on their feet.  
Sebastian cowers, his arms looping around his knees. Oh boy, now it’s gotten to him too. Before, he would mentally spit on the monsters' faces and curse, but now the whole world feels fabricated, like a cardbox theater made from the hands of a twisted god-wannabe, and he can’t fight now.  
Seems like madness is contagious – but then he thinks, it’s just the aftermath. It was coming for him too.  
Joseph’s hand comes to rest on his back. Sebastian is starting to breath again, and he lets out a small laugh.

“You were saying you were a ‘fuckup’ the other day… I guess that makes two of us now.”

Joseph nods slightly, laughing softly at his turn. He then gets up and lends Sebastian a hand.

“Come on. You should wash your face, your eyes are red and puffy.”  
“Shit – I cried ?”, Sebastian mumbles, rubbing his cheeks with the back of his hand, and getting surprised as he feels wetness.  
“A little,” Joseph answers. “Come on.”

He helps Sebastian up and the two of them walk to the bathroom. No one pays attention to them, apart from that one secretary who waves a hand at them with a big smile.

 

On the night following the fifth day back, Sebastian is not, surprisingly, drinking. It’s thirteen minutes past midnight and he’s watching TV, all lights on, gun in his hand. His eyes can barely make up the shapes on the screen – everything’s a grey blur of indistinguishable movements, black and white snow in the grey cube. The characters are speaking, an incredibly high-pitched gibberish that fills Sebastian’s brain like an unwanted song and makes him deaf to everything else.  
And that’s good.  
That’s what he wanted.  
Numb, numb, numb, number.  
No monsters will be heard over the TV.

 

It’s one in the morning and Joseph is standing, in loose sweatpants and a t-shirt, in front of his mirror. He woke up a few minutes ago, drowning in his anxious sweat, choking on a few pieces of nightmares he hadn’t swallowed yet. He ran out of his room, locked himself in the bathroom and jumped into the shower, letting cold water freeze him awake before starting to scrub his skin vigorously, the phantom sensation of monstrous, red and black vesicles and their roots cracking his skin open like soil during the drought burning his nerves raw.

He’s clean now, standing in front of the mirror, water dripping down his back, and he decides he’d shave too, while he is at it.  
His little dark eyes can’t help but glance at the door, fear making his heart throb in his throat.  
He carefully handles the razor, letting the blade slide smoothly on the shaving cream – slow, slow, almost like in a dream.

A sharp pain suddenly stings his jaw and he drops the razor, cursing out loud. The metallic, bell-like sound the blade makes when it touches the ground makes an ache spark at his temple.  
The clock is too loud.  
The light is too bright.  
Tick-tock-tick-tock like a loud drum behind his eyeballs, the cars outside roaring like monsters running up and down the street.

When he reopens his eyes, the pain dulling like a muffled scream, he sees a drop of blood in the sink.  
His eyes widen. He stares.  
Plip, plip, two more red dots on the porcelain of the sink.  
He raises his hand to cup his cut cheek. Warm blood warms his fingertips.  
The red drops slide in the basin, form a face, wink at him.  
He frantically opens the faucet and washes it all away.

His head is spinning a bit when he washes the foam off his face and applies disinfectant on his tiny wound. He curses internally and sticks on his skin the smallest bandage he can find in his medicine cabinet.  
He looks up, gazes in the mirror, doesn’t recognize who’s the wounded man staring back.  
Someone knocks on the door.  
He puts his gloves back on, slowly clenching his fists. The mental image of raw wounds flashes over the hardening ligaments on his wrists.  
Now, there are two people knocking.  
Three.

 

 

 


	5. Day Nine

On the ninth day back, Sebastian hasn’t gone to work.

He has locked himself in his room, curtains closed, lights out. His bed hasn’t been done in days. He’s sitting on the cold floor, back resting against the mattress. He has a bottle of whiskey in one hand and his gun in the other. Monsters’ nails are clawing at his door and they haven’t shut up the night. Eventually, one of the creatures starts rattling and groaning.

“Shut up !” Sebastian hurls at the door.

He sighs, his head falls back on the mattress, and he takes another gulp of cheap, bitter whiskey. A creature starts throwing itself against the door and whining.

“Shut up dickhead, shut up, I’m not in the mood,” Sebastian groans, vulgar when he’s angry and exhausted, as he counts the bullets in his revolver.

The pellets in the barrell really are testing him, he thinks.  
And now he feels the guy, that guy, Ruvik. He doesn’t hear him or see him, but feel him. Like rusty nails scratching at the back of his brain.

“Fuck off Victoriano, fuck off, fuck you…”

One bullet.  
He’s one bullet away from blowing his brains out to make them all shut up.

 

Soon there won’t be any whiskey left, so the high-pitched bell of the phone is a pleasant surprise. For half a second, Sebastian doubt its reality, stuck a the foggy maze of alcohol, but when he picks up, Joseph’s voice is a friendly hand pulling him out of his misery.

“Sebastian ?”  
“Joseph ? ‘s wrong ?”  
“I’m supposed to be the one to be asking that. You didn’t come to work, I was worried…”  
“‘m fine… ‘v’rything’s fine, thank you for asking.”  
“... Sebastian, are you drunk ?”

Joseph’s voice isn’t stern or scolding, but sincerely worried.

“‘t’s the only way I can put up with them,” Sebastian mumbles as he waves his gun to the door.  
“‘Them’ ? Seb, who are you talking about ?”  
“The monsters. They haven’t shut up the whole night. And I think that guy, uuuh, Ruvik is creeping on me too.”  
“Sebastian…”

The drunk man interrupts his partner before he gets to the “you know they aren’t real, right” part of his speech.

“I know, Joseph, I know… but they’re still real enough to keep me up all night and make me wanna kill myself.”

He hears Joseph let out a shaky sigh, and when he speaks again, his voice is lower, thicker, almost… intimate.

“Where are you now ? Are you safe ?”  
“Locked myself into my room. If they try coming through my door, I’ll shoot ‘em.”  
“You have your gun with you ?”  
“Yeah, my gun and my good ol’ bottle of whiskey. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Joseph lets out an uneasy laugh.

“You realize I’m more worried about you now than I was before, right ?”  
“Sorry about that.”  
“It’s okay.”

There’s a short silence during which Sebastian can hear Joseph probing through papers.

“Do you want me to come ?” Joseph finally asks.

Sebastian spends few seconds weighing pros and cons. Behind the door, a creature wails.

“Yeah,” he answers. “I think I’d need it, to be honest.”  
“Alright. Do you want something ? Have you eaten today ?”

Sebastian laughs weakly, his his lips against the phone.

“You’re not my mom, Joe.”  
“No, I’m your partner and your friend, and I care about you,” he hammers.

Sebastian sighs. Joseph doesn’t let go easily when he has an idea stuck in his brain.

“No, I haven’t eaten. I don’t know if I feel like eating, though.”  
“If I have to force-feed you chicken wings, I will,” his partner laughs, and Sebastian feels a little less distressed in this dark room of his.

“Alright, I’ll be here in fifteen minutes,” Joseph announces. “Don’t do anything stupid until I get here.”  
“Trust me for once,” the older man laughs.

A short silence. Embarrassment creeps in the room like an unwanted guest.

“I try,” Joseph says, his voice hushed and croaking. “But you’ll have to help me on this one.”

 

Sebastian jumps awake when he hears a key turning in the lock, his fingers clutching at his gun.

“Sebastian ?” a familiar voice calls.  
“In my room,” he breathes in relief. “It’s locked, though.”

Sebastian picks up the light sound of Joseph’s heels against the kitchen, then corridor tile. He puts his gun down when he hears knocks at his door.

“I’m here, Seb. I assure you I’m alone, all alone. There’s no one else here beside you and me.”

Sebastian looks down at his revolver, and his fingers running over the barrel.

“How do I know you’re saying the truth?”

He hears a weak laugh through the door.

“Trust me for once.”

A smile twists the corners of Sebastian’s mouth and he groggily stands up, his key nested in the warmth of his hand.

 

Joseph has actually bought chicken wings. When Sebastian comes out of his room, he is welcomed by the warm smell of the meat and sauce, then hastily led to the kitchen and pushed into a chair. Joseph orders him to eat in a stern but concerned voice.

“Do you still think there are monsters in your apartment ?” he asks as Sebastian takes a small bite of meat.  
“I don’t hear them anymore,” he replies, “but that doesn’t mean they aren’t hiding somewhere else I didn’t go.”  
“Do you want me to go and check ?” Joseph inquires.

Sebastian shrugs.

“I know they aren’t real…”

But ?  
There’s still, nestled somewhere in his stomach, deep and hidden between folds of his gut, this ominous feeling, something that reeks of wasted bullets and dried blood.  
**Fear.**  
He sighs, surrendering to his own paranoia.

“How will you defend yourself if they attack you ?”

That doesn’t make sense, he realizes. But still, those creatures occupy a strange place of the planes of reality and he’s not sure where they stand. Their mere existence creates paradoxes. Enough to give Sebastian a headache, but Joseph doesn’t seem shaken. He pats the gun at his side like a loyal and trusted dog.

“I guess, then,” Sebastian laughs.

Joseph takes the gun out of his holster and professionally cocks it. He offers his partner a smile and starts his patrol. Sebastian takes another bite of his food, surprised to actually enjoy it, and watches his partner disappear after the corner of the room.  
There’s something, in Sebastian’s brain, urging him to run after Joseph, pull him back into the kitchen where they are safe ; something screaming at him that monsters will feast on his partner’s corpse if he leaves Joseph alone.  
Sebastian mentally chastises himself. His partner will be fine ! His partner will be fine ! He’s just being paranoid, overthinking, a kid scared of his own shadow.  
Speaking of shadows, one is standing in one of the kitchen’s corner, menacing, two yellow eyes piercing the dim light.

“Not for your disgusting face”, Sebastian taunts it as he puts a whole wing in his mouth.

 

Sebastian jumps in his chair, and his heart in his mouth when he catches, out of the corner of his eye, a silhouette. It’s Joseph returning from his patrol, his gun still in his hand.

“The apartment is clear,” he announces as he puts his pistol back in his holster. “Have you seen more of them when I was away ?”  
“A shadow guy in the corner, I think he wanted some of my food,” Sebastian chuckles, and his partner can only smile at the pleasing sound.

Joseph adjusts his gloves in a mechanical reflex and takes place in the chair facing Sebastian, and watches him as he takes the last bite of chicken.  
The silence is comfortable, there is no monsters groaning, no Ruvik, just Joseph’s breathing, Sebastian’s munching, the distant ticking of a clock and the muffled roaring of cars driving down the street.  
Joseph looks more relaxed than some days ago, his skin color healthier, and he even has a light and soft smile drawing his lips as he watches his partner lick the sauce off his fingers.

“You look better,” Sebastian blurts out. “I mean. Healthier. Happier. Did something happen ?”

Joseph looks surprised, and he has to think for a few seconds, his finger tapping his chin, before remembering.

“I started seeing a psychiatrist,” he explains calmly. “It’s doing me a lot of good.”

He pauses, searching his words by biting his lips.

“I thought you should see one to. It could probably help you a lot.”

Sebastian looks down at his hands. Yeah, he probably should.

“How can you talk of what’s going on without revealing…”

He pauses, shaking his head and desperately looking for words.

“... whatever happened ? That was some crazy stuff and I don’t know how you can talk about that.”

The other man shrugs, pushing his glasses back on his nose. He seems strangely defensive, his shoulders stiff, chin upward.

“I don’t tell her about that. I stay as evasive as I can.”  
“Well that’s a healthy relationship to have with a psychiatrist !” Sebastian teases.

Joseph’s eyes suddenly go dark and blank, the smile on his face dying like a wilted flower.

“I know it’s not supposed to be that way but…”

He sighs, and Sebastian sees his hands start shaking.

“... I just want help,” Joseph finishes, barely a whisper.

A crushing guilt jumps on Sebastian’s shoulder like an overly excited kid, cutting his breath short. It was a sensitive subject, and Joseph is sensitive now, and maybe those aren’t things you should joke about right now.  
An awkward silence is menacing but Sebastian cuts it quickly.  
“I’m very glad you took that step. I wish I could help you more on my own,” he adds.  
“There’s not much you can do,” Joseph sighs, “except… you know. Staying alive.”

They exchange a smile, and Sebastian thinks he really likes seeing Joseph that way, when the lines of worry between his eyebrows disappear and happy ones appears at the corners of his mouth.

 

Joseph had helped him do the dishes and ventilate the apartment while Sebastian did his bed and cleaned the alcohol off his bedroom’s floor. The hadn’t talked much more, settling themselves in a comfortable silence, the older man appreciating a monster-free and Ruvik-free space.

“So, you have a spare key to my apartment, my phone number…”, Joseph enumerates as Sebastian escorts him to the front door.  
“Yes, yes,” Sebastian laughs at his partner’s unnecessary worry.  
“If you need anything, if anything’s wrong, you can call me. Anytime, anywhere,” Joseph insists as he reluctantly walks to his car.  
“If anything’s wrong, I call you,” the other man repeats. “Also, that, uh, also stands for you. If you need me, call me.”

Joseph stops. He holds his coat closer to his chest. He opens his mouth to speak, but renounces. Instead, he gives Seb a little smile. A smile that hits Sebastian like a slap. It’s the sad little smile that says “I try not to bother you with my problems”. He wants to reach out, to grab Joseph by the arm and tell him that’s not what he wants, he wants his partner to be open and honest about what is going on, he wants to be able to see Joseph a drunken crying mess once, just once, to make up all the times he was the drunken crying mess Joseph picked up off the floor, but Joseph is already sitting in his car and starting the engine.  
“Take care of yourself, okay ? See you tomorrow !” he greets before driving off.

Sebastian stays under the honey light of the front porch for a few minutes, watching the familiar highlights disappear into the traffic. He notices out of the corner of his eye a tree, that looks slightly like a person, and the shadow guy awkwardly standing next to it.  
“Great, you made a friend.”

 

The night is… weirdly quiet.  
Sebastian lays awake, staring at the ceiling.  
The tick-tock of the clock sounds louder than usual.  
They’re all gone.  
For how long ?  
Sebastian shakes his head to dislodge the question. He should appreciate this quietude while it lasts.

 

Joseph is suffocating.  
There’s something, something on him, a monster, a creature, blank rotting eyes and knives for hands, watching him through barbed wire.  
He tries to throw them off but his blood is boiling, boiling with that feeling, something dark and putrid that turned his body red with blood and grey like ash, something burning like hellfire.  
_Fight it fight it fight it_  
His body twitches and convulses in an unholy way, as if a demon was trying to get out of his chest. He can barely breathe, wheezes loudly. Tears are streaming down his face as he struggles in between the sheets to get a hold of himself. His hands reach for a someone to strangle. He tries to fight that urge **(that memory)** , clenching and unclenching his fists, punching the air, grasping the blanket, and eventually he is clawing at his own throat, trying to dislodge the scream stuck there.

He eventually snaps out of that violent fit when a coughing fit jumps at him and he rises on his elbows, the pain punching him in the sternum, and he wheezes and whoops, bends on the side, mouth hanging open as if he was going to throw up.  
When he starts tasting blood on his tongue, he runs to the bathroom, to the sink, feels the nausea wash over him like cold waves. His guts twist and ache but, ultimately, he’s left bending over the basin, mouth open, drooling and crying in pain.  
He reopens his eyes, slowly, trying to distinguish the world through tears-clogged eyelashes.  
Not a single red drop in the sink.  
Joseph sighs and lets himself fall, exhausted, on the floor.

It’s 4:07 in the morning. He’s not going back to sleep.  
Half of the coffee pot is empty and he’s onto the rest.  
His heart is pounding, throbbing erratically with the caffeine.  
Good.  
He’s not going back to sleep.

 

 

 


	6. Day Thirteen

On the thirteenth day back, in the middle of the night, Sebastian is crying on the floor and choking on his own saliva.

His little Lily is standing three feet away from him, a blur of grey skin and her beautiful yellow dress, her silhouette torn apart and smeared in the air like charcoal.  
She doesn’t speak, doesn’t move, and looks down at Sebastian with dark, dark eyes.  
The man is kneeling on the floor, his hands bearing his weight as he bends down, sobs ripping him in two. He tries to call his sweet daughter, to look up and see her, but his eyes are wet and his lashes clump together with the water and salt.

“Lily… Lily, my little girl…”

The next sob comes like a coughing fit, burning his lungs and making his sides hurt like his bones are trying to rip his skin apart. Sebastian desperately tries to suck in breaths but the air is too thick to swallow and he feels like he’s drowning in his own tears. His cheeks are as damp as if he’d been swimming and he feels his tears splashing the floor and his hands in big drops.

“Lily… Lily…” is all he can manage.

Lily’s silhouette starts smudges and glitching like a broken TV before her eyes start dripping black ink ; soon it’s like black blood coming out of her nose, mouth and eyes, and a violent nausea crashes against Sebastian like a groundswell. He tries to reach out, she’s so close but his fingers shake horribly. A mechanical laugh starts blurting out of her tiny mouth like a broken record and Sebastian can hear her say :

“Such a bad daddy ! Such a bad daddy ! Such a bad daddy !”

It’s too much, too much, he can barely breathe and he would better be dead than see and hear this.  
He starts searching blindly for the phone, and he mutters “call Joseph, call Joseph, call Joseph” louder and louder to cover his daughter’s maniacal laugh, but he can always hear her.  
He miraculously manages to enter Joseph’s number and he presses the phone as hard as he can against his ear so he can be closer to Joseph’s voice, and farer from this distorted version of Lily’s.

“Such a bad daddy couldn’t save his dear daughter ! Such a bad daddy couldn’t save his dear daughter !”  
“Please, please pick up, please, please…”, he begs as the ringing echoes in the night.  
“Dear daughter ! Dear daughter ! Dead daughter ! Dead daughter !”

Sebastian glances at his clock ; it’s 1:14 in the morning and he’s calling his best friend because his dead daughter is bleeding black on his carpet and taunting him in a puppet’s voice.

“Please… please… please…”

The clicking sound of the phone being picked up.  
There are three seconds of silence during which Sebastian tenses, riven between the claws of the behemoth his brain full of dark, repressed memories engendered and the intangible shelter Joseph’s voice provided.

“Mmh, mmh… Seb ?” a muffled, sleepy voice mumbles.  
“Joseph ?” Sebastian croaks between sobs.  
“Mmh, what’s wrong ?” inquires the other man.  
“It’s – it’s so bad, Joseph, so bad…”, Sebastian struggles to say, “it’s, it’s…”

He sucks in a deep breath, shakes his head and turns his back to the crooked, misshapen version of Lily his brain is feeding him, his guts screaming not to look away from an enemy – but he has to, if he wants to feel closer to his partner.

“This apartment is full of ghosts, Joseph, it’s full of ghosts and they’re haunting me,” he blurts out, “there is, there is –”

He can’t say “Lily”, because it’s not Lily, not his Lily, just his traumatized brain creating monsters out of his past. He tries to explain nonetheless.

“... there is this awful hallucination, I know this isn’t real but I can’t stand it, I hate it, I hate it, I, I –”  
“Have you been crying ?” Joseph interrupts, voice barely a whisper. “You sound like you’ve been crying…”, he adds softly.

Sebastian doesn’t want to respond, because it has been so long since he has cried that bad, and he thought he was doing better. He doesn’t want to be weak, not when Joseph is so unstable himself, when he needs him, but then Joseph’s voice, tender from sleep and empathy, cuts his thoughts out :

“It’s okay to cry, you know. It’s been very hard, it’s normal you’re feeling bad.”  
“That bad ?” Sebastian whimpers.  
“Yeah, that bad. Don’t feel guilty for needing a friend here.”

He hears Joseph yawning and and the ruffles of sheets as he stretches.

“Do you want me to come ?”  
“No, no,” Sebastian cuts him, “you’re half-asleep and you could get in an accident. I’m awake, I’m coming.”

He stands up, his legs wobbly and free arm stretching for balance, then for his gun.

“I’m sorry to disturb you that early..." he whispers as he walks to the door without a look back.  
“It’s okay. I told you, if you need me, you call me. Anytime, anywhere.” Joseph croons sleepily.

Sebastian is smiling by the time he hangs up. He wipes his wet cheeks with the back of his hands and runs to his car, locking his apartment and the ghosts and monsters inside.

 

The ride was exhausting, monsters shapeshifting into trees and the fire that took his sweet little girl pouring out of the street lamps. Sebastian’s hands hurt from his fingers clutching onto the wheel, and he feels tingling in his arms from the blood flow going crazy.  
When he parks his car near the building that holds Joseph’s apartment, he’s numb and limp and he hardly draggles himself to the front door and into the elevator. His fingers are shaking when he tries to push the button and hiccups are still jumping from his lungs to his throat, making all of his organs toss and waggle until he wants to puke them out.

He knocks weakly on Joseph’s door, snuffling like a child and trying to catch his breath, and he feels desperately embarrassing. When Joseph opens the door, Sebastian realizes he’s probably all kind of ugly, he knows there are still tears streaming down his cheeks and chin, his mouth is hanging open because he can’t breathe properly, his head and shoulders low and heavy, weighing down his whole carcass, but he almost forgets about himself when his partner comes in his sight.

He has never seen Joseph like that. His hair a little messy, some locks falling in front of his eyes, those that are soft and tired, barefoot and clothes casual and loose. He’s not even wearing his gloves !  
Sebastian almost wonders, for a split second, if this is really his partner standing in front of him.  
But it is, he thinks with a weird feeling of something not being quite right, those are his small dark eyes, his thick-framed glasses, the faded line between his eyebrows. Joseph looks softer without his sharp outfit and strict hair combing, silhouette rounder around the edges as sleep wore him out, and overall way, way less intimidating. Nothing like the thorough, sometimes stern but extremely competent detective he is and looks like by daylight.

Joseph observes Sebastian with sleepy, half-lidded eyes. A soft and sad smile draws his lips and he slowly shakes his head.

“You’re a mess, Seb…”, he whispers, full of empathy.

Sebastian snuffles and tries to force a broken laugh, but his partner is softly pulling him in by his sleeve.

“Come in. Don’t stay in the hallway.”

Sebastian is gently ordered to take his shoes off. He steps on his feels and stumbles out of his shoelaces, his legs trembling under him.

The older man lets himself be gently led to the living room, where Joseph slowly and carefully takes his brown coat off his heavy shoulders, before inviting him to sit on the comfortable sofa.

“Stay here and relax. I’ll get you something warm to drink,” the younger man says as he walks to the kitchen.

Sebastian can see him opening a shelf, get a little metallic box that he lays on the counter and a blue mug. He finds a tea ball in a drawer that he carefully fills with some of the box content and then tosses it into the cup.  
Joseph’s apartment feels like safety, the light low and soft on Sebastian’s eyes, the sofa squishy just right, the gas cooker whistling its melody as water gets boiled, everything coming together to create a cottony atmosphere that cozies Sebastian until his body is flimsy and numb again, and cradles him in a quiet half-sleep.

 

He snaps out of his torpor when Joseph comes back to him and hands him the blue, steamy mug.

“What is this ?” Sebastian asks as he takes the hot cup in his hands.  
“Chamomile,” Joseph answers. “It’ll help you relax.”

Sebastian vaguely remembers, a long, long time ago, someone handing him the same thing after a nightmare. His eyes look up from his drink to search for Joseph’s silhouette.  
It seems unreal, Sebastian thinks. Before, a long, long time ago, Joseph would have scolded him, voice too gentle to be severe, and lend him the sofa, but now…  
He can’t really explain it. It’s like that hell they’d been through had softened them, sanded down their edges and grated their flesh until their bones and insides were left for all to see, and ditched them soft, scared and scarred.  
Sebastian hates this. He hates feeling that helpless, that childish. His skin feels tender and his joints weak, and he can think nothing good out of it. He wishes they could be normal again, him big of heart and of shoulders with a sense of justice running in his veins and a loud laugh, Joseph upright, a little strict but loyal, with precise gestures and an intimidating gaze.  
But now, it’s – he checks – 1:57 in the morning and he’s drinking chamomile at Joseph’s place, his body is made of linen and cotton, and his partner is playing with the locks falling in front of his eyes.  
Sebastian is getting used to this softer Joseph.

He’s started shaking again by the time he finishes his drink, and there’s a cold sweat sticking his skin like a snake’s scales. Joseph notices his shivers.

“You should take a bath,” he offers. “You’ll feel better afterwards.”

Sebastian vaguely nods, and his partner offers a hand to help him up.

“I’ll try to find you some fitting clothes,” Joseph continues as he escorts him to the bathroom. “Make yourself at home.” he adds as he leaves Sebastian in front of the bathtub before closing the door.

The older man pulls the shower curtain open, surprised to see there’s no rotting corpse in the white tub, and turns on the faucet. He swings on his heels, stiff as a robot, and waits, like anesthetized, until the water gets warm. He then shuts the drain and watches the water splash the white bottom of the tub with the sound of a miniature, roaring cascade. He spends a few seconds pacing out, not knowing what to do, before stopping in front of the mirror.  
Ow, he doesn’t look good.  
His eyes are red and puffy, and the tears brought a pink hue to his eyelids, nose and cheeks. Dark circles underline his eyelashes like purple bruises, and stray hair are sticking to his cheeks and temples, glued by the salt and water.  
Sebastian starts undressing as the bathtub gets filled, peeling the clothes of his skin like the molt of a snake. He almost doesn't recognize himself as his naked reflection stares back. His broad shoulder are falling heavy with misery and his whole silhouette seems to be crumbling with despair.

Joseph knocks.  
Sebastian promptly cover his crotch as his partner cracks the door open, hands carrying a towel and fresh clothes.

“They’ll probably be a little small for you, but they’re the biggest I found,” Joseph’s voice explains from the other side.  
“They’ll do,” Sebastian replies as he takes the clothes from Joseph’s hands. “Thank you, Joseph.”

He hears a muffled “no problem” through the door.  
He unfolds what Joseph has brought him, discovers a tee-shirt and baggy sweatpants, and then disposes them next to the sink.

 

He doesn’t know how long he spaces out, eyes lost in the void, staring at an invisible god who doesn’t listen, but when he snaps out of his trance, the water in the tub has reached a fair level. Sebastian shuts the faucet before stepping in the water, body melting in its warmth.

A few minutes later, he’s crying again, sobs like punches in his chest and throat, and he can’t move, his hands clutching at the sides of the tub. He tries to stop crying but he can’t breathe, and his mouth is hanging open just so his muffled screams can escape. He’s shaking and he wishes his body would just stop convulsing because water is splashing on the tile.

“Sebastian ! Seb !” he hears Joseph calling.

He forces himself to suck in air before croaking a “Yeah ?”

“Are you okay ?”

He really doesn’t want to say “yes”, and he can’t anyway. An awkward silence settles in, softly ripped by Sebastian’s teary hiccups.

“... Can I come in ?” Joseph asks when the older man sounds calmer.

Sebastian whines out a tiny, pathetic “yes” and Joseph is stepping in the bathroom. He notices the puddles on the floor but doesn’t seem to care. Sebastian watches him open a drawer to pull out a washcloth, and then walks to the bathtub.

“I’ll help you,” Joseph simply explains.

Sebastian would have refused if he wasn’t so miserable.  
Joseph has sat on the edge of the bathtub and he’s reaching in the water to wet the washcloth. The older man simply watches him, and his eyes close by themselves when he feels the warm cloth covered in soap running in circles against the skin of his back.  
There’s a soothing silence setting in the room. Sebastian is aware of his breathing, of Joseph’s, of the sound of the water swashing against the tub and his skin, the rubbing sound of the washcloth against his back, neck, shoulders. A clock is ticking.

“It’s been a long time…”, he finally says.

Joseph only hums in answer, but Sebastian knows Joseph knows what he means.  
It’s not the first time Joseph has to help him that way.  
There were many times where Joseph had to push his drunken and pathetic ass into the bathtub to scrub him out of the alcohol and blood sticking to his skin. The times where Sebastian was crying uncontrollably and trying to communicate through ethanol-bubbling sobs, Joseph would just repeat empathetic “I know, I know”’s as he rubbed Sebastian's shoulder with soap-covered hands.

“Tilt your head back,” Joseph gently orders.

Sebastian does as he’s told and he gets to enjoy Joseph’s fingers running through his hair, massaging his scalp.

“Can you soap the rest of your body ?” the younger man asks as he finishes rinsing off the shampoo.

Sebastian acquiesces as he takes the washcloth Joseph hands him.

“I’ll let you get dressed, I’ll be just behind the door if you need me. Are you going to be okay ?” Joseph inquires as he walks out.  
“I think I can manage,” Sebastian answers with a tired but soft smile.

Joseph nods and closes the door behind him.

 

Sebastian feels like a whole new man when he walks out of the bathroom. He smells Joseph’s soap on his skin, a familiar scent that grounds him and seems to scare the monsters away. The washcloth has scrubbed him raw and now his flesh feels young again.  
His partner has brought pillows and a blanket on the sofa, cozying it for Sebastian’s night.

“Will that be okay ?” he asks as Sebastian appreciate the soft of the cushion.  
“It’s perfect,” Sebastian smiles. “Thank you.”

A smile draws Joseph’s lips and his tired eyes bright up.

“Great. Then, goodnight, Seb.”  
“Goodnight, Joe.”

 

It’s 3:48 when Sebastian wakes up panting, a muzzled scream choking him. He coughs to get it out, his trachea squeezing a throaty sound out of his mouth. His head falls back on the pillow and he feels fat tears running down his cheeks. Air is not too thick to breathe, it’s just his body that hates him, and he jumps out of the sofa in frustration.  
He starts pacing out in the living room, angry strides to exhaust himself, before rushing to the bathroom. He hasn’t realized he’s been letting out a pathetic whine since waking up, and Joseph is opening his bedroom’s door when Sebastian grabs the rim of the sink and looks at himself in the mirror.  
He sees a tired man with dead eyes, red creeping from his eyes to his cheeks – but that’s usual – and a silhouette behind him.  
Sebastian turns around, ready to run, and is surprised when it’s a sleepy Joseph with half-lidded eyes standing in front of him.

They don’t speak. Joseph simply observes Seb, the heavy tears rolling on his cheeks, the ragged breathing his chest refuses to let out. Then, he gently takes Sebastian's hand in his and leads him to his room. Sebastian follows him without protesting or wondering, numb and limp like a ragdoll.  
In Joseph’s room, a soft, honeyed light is pouring from the bedside lamp. The room is tidy, and Sebastian starts wondering when was the last time he had seen a room that clean.

“Right side or left side ?” Joseph proposes, his voice heavy with sleep.

Sebastian needs a few seconds to realize Joseph is offering to share his bed.

“What side do you usually take ?” he asks.  
“Both,” Joseph chuckles, and his partner lets out a small laugh himself.  
“Your glasses are on the nightstand on the left, so I’ll let you that side,” the older man says.

Joseph stretches and yawns.

“Good idea,” he mumbles as he climbs on the bed.

Sebastian observes Joseph slide under the blanket, and lays down next to him. He turns the light off when he’s asked to. He can see his partner stretch an arm to grab the gloves on his nightstand and promptly put them on.

“Huh ? You sleep with your gloves on ?” Sebastian asks.

Joseph turns his head to him over his shoulder.

“Yeah, um…” He hesitates, fists clutching and unclutching in the leather. “The make me feel safer.”

Sebastian just nods. He’s not going to ask more today.

A night silence settles in, with the purring of the cars outside and the muffled ticking of a clock, and Joseph rolls on his side, turning his back to Sebastian. The older man watches out of the corner of his eyes his partner drift off to sleep.  
Soon, he can hear Joseph’s low and regular breathing. His eyes get off the nape of his partner’s neck and wander to the ceiling.  
He doesn’t really want to sleep, because his brain loves torturing him in his dreams.  
But then, he thinks, he’s really, really tired. Also, Joseph’s bed is comfortable and smells like him, soap and a discreet note of Cologne. Hearing his partner’s even breathing soothe him in a fuzzy half-sleep.  
Mechanically, he slowly turns to Joseph, and rests his forehead against the nape of his partner’s neck.  
Feeling his partner’s skin against his, warm and soft, makes such a contrast from the rusty, cold, harsh and gory memories that still linger in behind the curtain of his eyelids, that Sebastian almost forgets to breathe. It’s such a inconspicuous but powerful change, hitting him in the guts like a punch.  
Acknowledging his position, he braces himself for the younger man waking up and telling him this is uncomfortable, but he only sees his partner’s hand reach out to his side to ghost over his arm. He spends a few seconds wondering what exactly was that, but Joseph doesn’t seem like he knows either.  
Soon, Sebastian’s breathing takes the pace of Joseph’s, and it softly leads him into a dreamless, heavy sleep.

 

 

 


	7. Day Fourteen

On the fourteenth day back, Joseph and Sebastian are sitting at the table in Joseph’s kitchen.  
The younger man pulls four pieces of bread out of the toaster and lays them on a plate. Each of them picks their share.  
Sebastian’s eyes almost jump out of his orbits as his partner sticks a dark green rectangle on the butter.

“What the hell is that ?” he asks.

Joseph looks up at him, his mouth open as he approaches his toast from his lips.

“That ? It’s, ah it’s nori.”

Sebastian shakes his head in disbelief.

“It’s seaweed. Mostly eaten in Japan. It’s often wrapped around sushi or put in noodles,” Joseph explains as he pokes it.  
“And you eat that ?” Sebastian asks as he stares, dumbfounded, at the sheet of nori.  
“Well, yeah.”

Joseph hands some to his partner.

“No way in hell !” Sebastian blurts out.

 

Joseph made tea and Sebastian fried eggs, and now they’re eating in silence.

Sebastian is tired, but a fair kind of tired, because he didn’t much sleep and not because his brain is exhausting itself by creating horrors.

“... I don’t really wanna get back to my place,” Sebastian grunts as he brings the mug to his lips. “It’s full of ghosts and monsters and I think they’ll be pretty pissed when I come back.”

Joseph looks up from his plate. A thoughtful line appears between his eyebrows and he start unconsciously tapping his chin.  
“Would you want to, um, stay here ?” Joseph asks after a while.

Surprised and confused, Sebastian puts his mug back on the table.

“What ?”  
“I mean, I worry about you when you’re alone at your place, and…” Joseph takes a deep breath that comes in as shaky. “... and I feel genuinely unsafe here, because I can’t trust my brain to function properly. So if we…”

He shrugs, lips pursued.

“... If we lived both here, you wouldn’t have the threat of the monsters you see in your house, I wouldn’t be scared for you and, um, four eyes are better than two,” he finishes  
  
Joseph looks quite embarrassed when he’s done talking and he goes back to contemplating the eggs in his plate.  
Sebastian weighs against the back of his chair, and thinks.  
He really can’t get back to the creatures clawing at his door, to Lily spilling black ink on his carpet, to the alcohol honeying the floor and his sheets. Joseph’s house is clean, no monsters are lurking, and his partner’s presence is enough to make him feel less anxious.

“Sounds good to me,” he finally says. “But what about my stuff ?”

Joseph seems surprised by Sebastian’s reply but is quick to answer.

“I’ll help you move it out. I’ll also lend you my laptop so you can notify your landlord you’ll be out of your apartment for an indefinite amount of time.”

Sebastian nods and hums.

“... You don’t have to do all of that for me, you know ?”, he finally whispers.

Joseph smiles.

“I want to.”

 

 

 


	8. Day Fifteen

On the fifteenth day back, Joseph has piled his clothes in his closet to make room for Sebastian’s.

 

 

 


	9. Day Sixteen

On the sixteenth day back, Joseph has moved all of Sebastian’s clothes next to his.

He has also brought Sebastian’s toiletries back to his apartment, and has thoroughly placed them in strategic places for Sebastian to feel as comfortable as he can.

 

 

 


	10. Day Eighteen

On the eighteenth day back, Joseph is woken up by Sebastian around 11pm. The man’s eyelashes flutter, his eyes struggling to open. He needs a few seconds to focus on Sebastian face, acknowledging the man’s hand clutching around his wrist.

“Mmh… Seb ? What’s wrong ?”

The older man catches his breath, and Joseph can see the trail of dried tears on his cheeks.

“Would you mind… if we shared the bed again tonight ?”

Joseph shakes his head and rise on his elbows, Sebastian not letting go of his hand.  
He looks so wrecked, so vulnerable. A child trapped by the monster under his skin. Joseph knows he wouldn’t have asked that before everything happened.  
The hell they’ve been through ripped off something. He cannot even explain to himself.  
They had a hard skin, strong bones, they could take a step back in any situation, even when there were a pool of blood at their feet and guts for carpet.  
But now, he thinks for the umpteenth time, because he loves dwelling on how everything fucked them up, now they’re weak and they cry and monsters are dancing in their heads, their temples are begging for a bullet and their insides feel poisoned.  
Eventually, he stops thinking, and pats the mattress next to him, inviting Sebastian in the bed.  
This time, they waste no time talking and the older man rapidly takes shelter under the heavy blankets.  
Joseph didn’t ask, and doesn’t feel like asking, why Sebastian is so troubled tonight.  
The older man inches to his side without coming too close, and lays his head on Joseph’s shoulder.

“I think it would be better if we shared the bed every night,” he whispers. Joseph can hear the fear hiding in his throat.  
“Yeah, it would be,” he agrees.

Sebastian nuzzles his nose in the crook of Joseph’s neck.  
Their closeness strikes the older man. It just does, but does nothing else, because his brain is cottony, his body limp, and he just wants to sleep.  
Joseph’s hand comes to stroke his arm, gently, soothingly. A touch for lullaby.

 

 

 


	11. Day Nineteen

On the nineteenth day back, Sebastian asks Joseph for his therapist’s number to make an appointment.

 

 

 


	12. Day Twenty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm putting a trigger warning here for self-harm (nothing involving blades or anything of the sort).

On the twentieth day back, Sebastian is woken up in the middle of the night by a muffled, shaky voice coming from the next room. He glances at the clock on Joseph’s nightstand ; it’s 1:06 in the morning. He carefully lends an ear, tilting his head toward the noise.  
It doesn’t stop and it sounds quite real, too.  
He reaches to wake Joseph up, but his hand lands in a mess of blue sheets.  
Is that Joseph he hears ?  
He pushes the blanket aside and gets on his feet. He pushes the door open, checking both side of the corridor before stepping out. Joseph’s voice sounds like it’s coming from the bathroom.  
Ever so carefully, Sebastian walks to the bathroom, his steps light and silent not to freak his partner out. When arriving at the door, he can hear choked sobs but can’t make out the words echoing out of Joseph’s mouth. Sebastian is trying really hard not to break through the door and barge into the bathroom. Collecting himself with a shaky sigh, he knocks softly.

“Joseph ?” he calls, barely a whisper.

He hears his partner choking in a surprised scream and his voice, brittle and breathy, comes through the door.

“Se, Sebastian…?”  
“It’s me, Joseph,” he insists as his partner starts repeating the same muffled words again, “Are you okay ?”  
“I’m not, I’m not okay,” Joseph sniffles in between the muttered words.  
“Can I come in ?” Sebastian asks.  
“No, no, no, please don’t,” his partner starts panicking, his voice hoarse and strangled, “I don’t want you to – you can’t see me that way…”  
“That way…? Joseph what’s going on ? What did you do ?” the older man blurts, panic creeping on him and clawing at his chest.

Joseph doesn’t answer and Sebastian can hear him start sobbing again. Sebastian’s blood runs cold and suddenly he’s bursting through the door and stumbling into the room. Joseph is sitting on the tile and looking at him with teary red eyes.  
Sebastian sees his partner bare-chested, his hands brought up to his neck, fingers strained like claws aiming at his skin. The older man tries to focus, his eyes squint, and he sees, on the other detective’s throat, thin, pink lines and red drops like tiny mushrooms sprouting from the scrapes.

 

Sebastian runs to Joseph’s side and crouches beside him, terrified and not knowing what to do.

“God, Joseph, what did you do ?!” he panics, even though he knows well what he did, “why did you do that ?”

Joseph is shaking his head and looking away from Sebastian, neck stretched, his lips trembling and body cowering as he tries to make himself as small as possible. There’s a little blood on his fingertips.

“It’s still in my blood,” he mutters, “it’s still in my blood and it wants to get out…”

Sebastian grabs his partner’s hands to stop him from keeping on scratching himself.

“I’m alive and I need to take the monster out,” Joseph pants. “I’m alive and I need to take the monster out, I’m alive and I need to take the monster out…”, he starts echoing, and Sebastian realizes this is what he had been hearing before.

The older man lowers Joseph’s hands onto his thighs, slowly understanding what his partner has been saying, and gently shakes him.

“Hey, hey, you’re not a monster, you don’t have an ounce of monster in you anymore, you’re never ‘turning’ again, I swear you’re not,” he runs on under his breath, “and if you feel like you are, tell me, please tell me, I’ll take care of you, but you have to promise me not to do that again,” he starts begging, his voice shaking with nervousness.

Out of the corner of his eye, he notices the t-shirt Joseph had thrown on the floor – the collar is torn and there are red fingertips on the fabric.  
The younger man lets out uneasy breaths and a tense smile distorts his lips.

“I can’t promise shit !”, he spits, and Sebastian is taken completely off-guard by his partner’s swearing, “I can’t promise shit because my brain is shit and I, I…”

He’s on the verge of crying again and Sebastian doesn’t know what to do, so he just squeezes Joseph’s shoulder a little more.

“I’ll get you a new t-shirt”, Sebastian says when Joseph seems calmer, “I’ll run a bath, and you’ll let me take care of you. Okay ?”

Joseph sniffles and wipes a tear with the back of his hand.

“I didn’t want you to see me like that…”, he breathes.  
“It’s okay, Joseph,” Sebastian whispers as he rubs his partner’s back. “It’s normal to have bad times after what happened to you.”  
“ _That_ bad ?” Joseph asks.  
“ _That_ bad.”

 

When Sebastian comes back to the bathroom with a washcloth and a new tee-shirt, Joseph is sitting in the bathtub and watching the water run, his head slightly tilted to the right and his eyes blank and tired.  
Sebastian closes the door as softly as he can not to startle his partner.  
When there’s enough water in the tub, Sebastian sits on its edge and bends to wet the washcloth. Joseph looks embarrassed, he’s curling up on himself and leans his chin against his chest. Sebastian splashes warm water on his partner’s back, thinking there’s nothing to be ashamed of. He’s seen Joseph naked plenty of times, because the showers at the KCPD are the best place to talk after an exhausting case, and also because Sebastian is the kind of man that loves embarrassing his partner by slapping his naked, soapy ass. Just guys being dudes.

Rubbing the washcloth in foamy, languid circles on Joseph’s pale skin, Sebastian notices the stiffness of his shoulders and muscles that quiver under the older man’s touch. Joseph’s whole body is in alert, ready to jump, to escape. Always bracing for a danger that doesn’t come.  
Eventually, the knots in Joseph’s muscles come undone under Sebastian’s large hands. The younger man sighs, his limbs falling heavily at his sides.

“I’m sorry you had to see me that way,” Joseph mutters after a while. “I hate being that weak.”  
“You’re not weak,” Sebastian assures. “You’re just in a bad mental place for now. It happens.”

Joseph nods weakly.

“I think what happened changed me,” he whispers, voice shaky from withheld tears. “I used to be so upright, upstanding, and now it feels like I’m falling apart. I’ve lost all composure and dignity,” he chuckles bitterly, “look at me now… I’m like a kid that needs to be taken care of.”  
“You’re not a kid,” Sebastian says as his hands run in warm and wet circles between Joseph’s shoulder blades, “you’re a grown ass man who needs help, and it’s fine,” he continues as he runs wet fingers through his partner’s hair.

 

Sebastian has let Joseph wash the rest of his body, turning around to give his partner a little more privacy. He rinses the washcloth at the sink and comes back to the tub to ever-so-gently rub the fresh red scratches on the younger man’s skin with cold water. Joseph looks at him with tired, half-lidded eyes, and he has to turn his head away not be be overwhelmed by his partner’s gentleness.

Sebastian finishes taping gauze on his partner’s throat with careful gestures.

“We’ll have to talk about it, right ?” he asks.

Joseph nods and puts the new t-shirt on as Sebastian throws the disinfectant-soaked cotton in the bin.

 

The silence is uncomfortable as they both sit on the sofa, both waiting for the other to begin.  
“So… um. If you’ve got something long and important to say, I think that’s the moment,” Sebastian drawls.  
“There’s not much to say..." Joseph whispers as he stares at his hands.  
“I still kinda wanna hear it,” Sebastian announces. “And I have put my burdens on you, so let me relieve you of yours.”

Joseph takes a long, shaky breath.

“Even if that hell is behind us, I still have those strange episodes that mimic how I felt back there, when I was… ‘turning’. I have violent headaches, and I get persuaded my skin is becoming all red, rotting again… I have urges to scratch it to get ‘the evil’ out, or something.” He takes another breath. “I have the impulse to claw at my arms, my cheeks, and my throat, especially my throat, as if I was trying to scratch it off, as if I was…” he lets out an uneasy laugh “well, losing my head, literally.”

Sebastian laughs with him but, this is terrifying.

He remembers turning – but for how long ? that, he doesn’t – and it was hell.  
He remembers the raw, destructive feeling devouring his guts, burning his flesh, erupting on his skin in disgusting, bloody dark fungus.  
And knowing that Joseph had to put up with that more than once, more than twice, he didn’t know how many times really, and still had to fight against the feeling, made Sebastian shiver.  
He leans towards his partner and gently shakes him by the shoulder.

“Hey. I, uh, I’d say I know how you feel but I really don’t, I’ve been spared that shit, but I really hate seeing you suffer that way. I can assure you you’re human, human and alive, and that’s the most important thing,” Sebastian assures in a soft voice. “I know things are hard, very hard, but I know you’re persistent. And if you’ve ever wanted to give in to whatever that was back then, I beg you to stay with me. I’m here for you if you need me, and if I have to tell you everyday that you’re not a monster, I will,” he declares. “We’re all kind of fucked up, our brains are blood-stained and messed up, but we’ll fight it. I’m sure we’ll find a way, somehow.”  
“Somehow…”, his partner repeats, eyes dreamy, head slightly tilted to the left.

Joseph nods, seeming to find back a shred of composure in his stature.

“Anyway,” Sebastian blurts out after a while, standing up. “We should get back to sleep. Thank god we can sleep tomorrow,” he concludes, slapping Joseph’s thigh.  
“You mean today.”  
“Yes, today.”

 

When they head back to the bedroom, Joseph is silent.  
He stays silent as he slips under the blanket and curls on himself.  
Silence is coming in again, awkward and heavy. It sits on the bed with the two men and watches them with big, dark, deep eyes, hand coming to rest around Sebastian’s throat.

“Other from that, how’ve you been coping ?”, he asks to banish the silence away.

Joseph jolts, his figure tensing, and he glances over his shoulder.

“Coping…?”

Sebastian realizes he should have asked that sooner. The day they came back on the force, even. Or before.  
Joseph rolls on his stomach and leans on his elbows, watching the older man through half-lidded, tired eyes that fatigue cradles in a deep dark hue.  
His answer is a loud, long sigh of exhaustion that has his head hanging low.  
Sebastian can’t help a small chuckle.

“Me too, me too,” he grins as he pats Joseph’s arm in sympathy.

His reaction pulls out a soft laugh from his partner’s mouth.

“So, yeah,” Joseph simply says after a while.

Sebastian understands.  
The younger man rolls back under the blanket, tugging it up to his nose.

“Good night, Seb,” he says over his shoulder.

When Joseph stops wriggling to find a comfortable position, Sebastian is left staring at the ceiling. Silence is settling in again, but it’s not as bold, almost muffled. On the other side of the blinds, a car honks.

 

Some minutes later, as Sebastian’s lids fall over his eyes like a curtain, he notices Joseph stiffening, a shiver shaking his limbs.  
Something must have crossed his mind because his breathing becomes a little ragged, a little scared, and he rolls on his back to stare at the ceiling with his eyes wide open.  
Sebastian forces an eye open to show Joseph he’s still awake. The younger man notices it, slowly turns to his partner, but stays silent.  
He’s still silent when he crawls to curl up against Sebastian’s side. He’s still silent when the older man arranges the blanket evenly over both over them, and then writhes to slide his right arm around Joseph’s tapered waist. He’s still silent when Sebastian whispers “I’m not letting my partner down”, voice trembling with emotion, mouth pressed to his forehead.  
Silence is softer, this time.

 

It’s 6:32 and Joseph is standing in front of the mirror, a hand rubbing his wounded neck, staring blankly at the razor and shaving cream disposed next to the sink.  
Sebastian walks into the bathroom at this moment, his work clothes and a towel hanging on his arm.

“Oh ! Sorry, I didn’t know you were here. I’ll let you –”

He stops when Joseph turns to him, a trembling, sad smile on his lips. Sebastian puts his clothes on a shelf and walks up to his tense partner.

“Hey. You okay ?” he inquires.

He notices the razor Joseph was looking at and thinks, _Ah_.

“I just… I don’t really trust myself with that thing right now…” Joseph admits as he hefts the bottle of cream in his hand.  
“Want some help ?” Sebastian offers.

Joseph doesn’t responds but turns to his partner. The older man takes the cream of his hands to coat his fingers this it. Holding Joseph’s head up by a hand at his chin, he begins to apply the balm on his partner’s cheeks.

“Y’know, a little stubble suits you too,” Sebastian laughs.

Joseph laughs too.

 

 

 


	13. Day Twenty-One

On the twenty-first day back, Sebastian tries to light a cigarette during the break.  
It has been a long time since he had a smoke, he thinks, and he missed it.  
His thumb scrapes the sparkwheel to make the lighter spit a blue flame, and the fire kisses the tip of the rod.  
Sebastian notices a strange smell when the flame dies out. Pulling the cigarette away from his mouth, he sniffs carefully, before throwing the cig and the lighter on the concrete with a violent shiver.  
It smells like burning, rotting flesh.  
It smells like the corpses, falling at his feet, he set fire to, back in Ruvik’s artificial hell.  
Burning, burning dead bodies.  
He stomps on the stub as hard as he can, trying to bury the disgusting smell in the tar, and gets back inside his office.  
He’s still shaking when he sits back at his desk.

Later, he buys a new lighter and another pack of cigarettes of another brand.  
Maybe it was just that, maybe it was just the brand.  
He lights one of them, brings it to his lips and immediately hurls it on the sidewalk, crushing it under his heel.  
It was not just the brand.

During dinner, he tells Joseph he’s quitting smoking. His partner’s eyes sparkle and his lips twist in something sweet and tender. Sebastian wonders why he didn’t quit smoking sooner.

 

 

 


	14. Day Twenty-Two

On the twenty-second day back, Sebastian meets with the psychiatrist. It’s a tall lady in her thirties perched on black heels, messy black hair held up in a ponytail. Her big earrings tinkle like bells when she nods to greet Sebastian, and she offers a bright smile as she holds her hand out for him to shake. Her voice is fruity and cheerful when she leads him to her office and introduce herself.

Sebastian was expecting to have to lie on a red sofa but it’s a comfortable chair that’s waiting for him in front of the doctor’s, a glass table parting them. The therapist takes a piece of paper on which she writes her new patient’s name and then slightly leans toward him, waiting for him to speak.

  


During dinner, in between two sautéed potatoes, he realizes it’s been ten days since he last drank.

He had been too busy trying to manage his chaotic brain and all the dead screams living in it, taking care of Joseph, focusing on cases he only had written reports of…  
Chewing carefully, he tries looks for withdrawal symptoms he would have experienced.

In his head, everything he has ever read on that comes back from the deep corners of his mind.

Anxiety, irritability, insomnia, foggy thinking, heart palpitations, hallucinations, confusion…

 _I already have ‘em all from that hell_ , he thinks, a bitter smile making his lips twitch.

He decides to inform his partner of that.

 

“Well, um… I’m not a doctor, but maybe your brain is too, well ‘busy’ dealing with…” – a waving of the hand to keep the memories at bay – “what happens, that it didn’t register you stopped drinking ?”

 

Sebastian shrugs.

 

“I’m not sure this is how it works, but I can’t find any other explication, so I’ll go with yours,” he laughs. “And anyway, I don’t wanna dwell on that.”

 

He carefully cuts more of his meat.

 

“You should still see a doctor,” Joseph says. “You never know.”

“Yeah ? And what could I tell him ? ‘Hello, I’m an alcoholic because my wife left me, my daughter died, I’ve seen a hell you wouldn’t even believe me if I told you about, and now I’m waiting for withdrawal symptoms but they don’t come because my brain is too busy creating hallucinations that have nothing to do with me stopping drinking and everything to do with what I saw in hell – that I cannot tell you about by the way’ ?”

“Recovering.”

 

Sebastian looks up from his plate, confused, his fork raised in the air by the movements he illustrated his tirade with.

 

“Uh ?”

“ _Recovering_ alcoholic” Joseph repeats.

 

And like that, under Joseph’s gaze, a man with shining, hopeful eyes, wet hair and cheeks still hot from the water of the shower, a switch is activated somewhere in Sebastian’s chest, and he thinks : “ _okay_ ”.

_I’m never drinking again._

_Or at least I’m going to try._


	15. Day Twenty-Four

On the twenty-fourth day back, Sebastian wakes up to Joseph’s scream tearing through his gut like a silver blade. Jolting awake, the older man promptly reaches for the lamp and switches it on, then turns around to his partner.  
Joseph is curling on himself, head heavy and mouth hanging open in agony, his right hand clutching the skin at his side and the left one grabbing the sheets, knuckles turning white.  
Sebastian blindly grabs his partner’s arm and squeeze it, as gently as he can as an alarming confusion makes his heart jumps in his throat.

“Joseph ? Joseph, hey ! What’s happening ?”

The younger man tries to lift his head and Sebastian can see his lips desperately trying to shape words.

“Sh – sho… someone sho…” he chokes, nails digging in the skin under his ribs.

 _“Someone shot me”_ , Sebastian can guess, and crawls to sit in front of his partner, his free hand reaching for Joseph’s.

“What do you mean, someone shot you ? How ? Where ?” he blurts.

His fingers curls around Joseph’s to remove the hand of his side.  
The younger man is still panting, features writhing in pain, left hand grabbing Sebastian’s sleeve.  
Eventually, his partner pushes his hand away and helps him lift his head up.

“Show me,” Sebastian orders, “tell me where it hurts.”  
“Exactly where the first bullet went through..." Joseph pants, his fingers tracing the line where the pain slices his skin.

Sebastian lifts the younger man’s t-shirt to examine his side.  
Joseph’s skin is perfectly clean, with only red clawing marks from his clutching hand.  
The younger man falls back, head in the pillow. His breathing is coming in short gasps and wheezes and he runs mechanically his fingers over his bruised side.

“Holy fuck,” Sebastian can hear him huff, “holy fuck…”

Surprised by his partner’s swearing, Sebastian rolls back on his side of the bed, leaning on his elbows to look at his stunned partner.

“What was that ?” Joseph finally croaks, pulling his t-shirt up to his chest.  
“What happened ?”, inquires the older man.

His partner lets out a shaky breath.

“I don’t know, I just… It felt like someone shot me again. I swear I felt the bullet rip through my skin,” he manages to articulate in a thick voice.

Sebastian buries his head in his pillow to think.  
“It’s like… a flashback, but with real, tangible pain involved ? I don’t know,” he huffs in frustration, “maybe your brain remembered when you got shot and brought up physical pain to go with this thought ?”

Joseph shakes his head in disbelief and exhaustion.

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” he mutters.

Sebastian nests his head in the warmth of his pillow.

“Do you think you can get back to sleep ?” he asks Joseph.

The other man grunts.

“I hope,” he mutters.

He sighs, loud with fatigue and emotion. Joseph lets go of the hem of his t-shirt and rolls on his stomach, burying his head in the cushion. He wriggles some more, trying to find a comfortable position. Eventually, he settles on his side, facing away from Sebastian.  
After such an agitation, silence feels strange but welcome. Sebastian is already slipping out of consciousness again. He reaches to switch the light off and dives head first into his pillow.  
He can hear Joseph’s peaceful breathing, now. He must have fallen back asleep.  
Dizzy from sleep and maybe something else he can’t really pinpoint, he stretches his arm to lodge a protective hand in the slight hollow of his partner’s waist.

 

 

 


	16. Day Twenty-Five

On the twenty-fifth day back, in the middle of the night, Sebastian’s eyes are drawn open by Joseph’s hushed, hissing voice.

Pricking up his ear over his shoulder, he can make up his partner’s litany of “ _jump jump God I want to jump let me jump let me die let me_ ”.  
There are two monster settling in Sebastian’s stomach, one smells like the vicious fear of losing his best friend and memories covered in guts and Joseph’s sweat as the younger man prays for death in an empty church, Sebastian grasping at his shoulders, the other has a tiny beak and croaks “god, again ?”.

The older man rolls on his hip and crawls to his partner’s side. Joseph is frantically shaking his head as if trying to dislodge those same thoughts he keeps wording.  
Sebastian’s left hand waves blindly in the air before finding the warmth of Joseph’s right cheek, cupping the younger man’s face to bring him closer.

There’s something striking through him like lightening, making his blood hotter as it runs under the skin of his palms and cheeks. It tastes like tenderness, or empathy, or love, or maybe all of these drowned in the honey haze of sleep, and Sebastian smacks a wet smooch on his partner’s cheek – or maybe it was his temple, or the corner of his eyes, he’s not really sure – before burying his face in the crook of the younger man’s neck.  
Joseph is grabbing the arm Sebastian threw over him to cup his cheek like a drowning man clinging to a buoy. He’s letting out tearless sobs that have his chest heaving erratically and lips trembling with each outlet of air.

“Seb,” he whimpers, “Seb, Seb…”

There are ruffling sounds covering Joseph’s wailing as Sebastian wiggles in the sheet, trying to find a way to slide his right arm around his partner’s waist.

Eventually, he locks his arms around the younger man’s loins, pulling him in a protective and consoling embrace.

Joseph squirms a little more as his ragged breathing draws the last sobs out of his throat, and his body finally weakens.  
One of his hands stays firmly holding onto Sebastian’s left wrist, the other flies to his side to meet his partner’s.

Joseph tries to catch his breath, loud and shaky sighs escaping the barrier of his gritting teeth.

Moments later, he’s going limp in Sebastian’s arms.

“I hate those thoughts,” he whispers, “I hate them, they haunted me before, followed me into that hell and now they won’t leave me.”

Sebastian tightens his hold.

“Maybe they won’t leave you that soon,” he grunts, voice heavy with sleep, in his partner’s neck, “but I swear to god I’m not leaving you either, I’m not letting you down, and I’ll do my best to help you, I swear.”

Joseph’s eyes widen, his mouth agape in disbelief. He’s too tired and distressed to immediately process Sebastian’s declaration and there are a few seconds where he stays, eyes wide and mouth open like a fish’s. Then, he lets out a low whimper as he starts writhing, trying to curl up closer to Sebastian in his partner’s embrace. The older man let him wriggle some more until they’re pressed together, chest to chest and legs entwined.

Sebastian comes to think he doesn’t really know why he does that.  
Some time ago, even the _thought_ of being this close to the other man wouldn’t have crossed his mind.  
But _now_ …  
Now, they lost every ounce of dignity, of composure they had when they tried to kill each other, then themselves, back in that hell.  
Now, they only have each other when their minds regurgitate flashes of legs and brains like chewed meat, waking them in the dead of the night.  
And now, holding his partner in his arms seemed so…normal ?  
As if the other man could disappear at any second, turn into a mess of red and black distorted limbs, or shoot himself with a silver bullet, holding him feels like the best thing to do.  
The two men are like dolls of fabric, cut open in the middle, stuffing spilling out. They found themselves both with a needle on a thread in one of their hands and, somewhere along the way, decided they’d help stitch the other back together – and so, they began.  
And, deep down, they know, they are craving.  
Craving softness, craving warmth, craving not having to worry about monsters strolling their apartments, craving arms to let themselves melt in, craving the knowledge that the other will never leave, that they will never have to look for each other through mazes of guts and grey fire, craving peace, peace, peace.  
Holding the other feels like the right thing to do.  
Sebastian can’t really explain.  
He’s too tired to try.  
He presses his lips against his partner’s forehead before his head falls back in the pillow, ballasted with sleep.  
This cushion is a little small for the two of them, he thinks.  
That doesn’t really matter.

 

 

 


	17. Day Twenty-Six

On the twenty-sixth day back, Joseph comes home with a little plastic bag.  
It’s 9:03 in the evening and he’s coming back from an appointment with his psychiatrist.

“What is that ?”, inquires Sebastian as his partner lays the pouch on the table.  
“New medications. Antipsychotics anxiolytics with sedative properties,” he recites. “They’re supposed to help me manage the hallucinations, anxiety and help me sleep,” Joseph explains, sounding a little skeptical.  
“Only one way to find out,” Sebastian encourages as he disposes the plates and cutlery on the table.  
“I guess so.”

Joseph takes his coat out and hangs it, then comes back to help his roommate with the dishes.

 

Later that evening, Sebastian is lying on his side in the comfortable bed, observing Joseph as he waits for the meds to kick in.

“Aah… It’s funny,” Joseph babbles, watchings his own hands as he waves them on front of his eyes.  
“What’s funny ?”, asks the older man.  
“I don’t know, it’s just… Everything feels softer ? I can’t explain,” his partner croons, apparently feeling better. “It feels fuzzy, like I’m floating, like I’m far, far away, out of my body… but it’s good, you know ?”

He hums and lets his arms fall back at his side.

“I think it works,” he comments. “I’m not anxious at all, everything feels a little less scary. Like I’m floating. It’s strange, but not unpleasant.”

His mouth quirking up, Joseph turns his head on the side to look at Sebastian.  
A pleasing and warm silence enters the room, settling comfortably on the bed with the two men. Joseph is simply smiling at his partner, his eyes sparkling a discreet joy. Sebastian watches him as he crosses his hands on his chest and closes his eyes.

“I’m glad that works,” Sebastian whispers when Joseph stops humming.  
“Yeah, I’m glad too.”

He reopens his sleepy eyes.

“I think I’m going to fall asleep any minute now,” he simply states.  
“Then sleep,” Sebastian replies. What else could he say ?

Joseph lets out a long sigh that doesn’t sound scared or angry. It’s been a while since Sebastian had heard one like that.  
A clock is ticking. The street’s melody sounds like a lullaby.  
Eventually, Joseph has drifted off to sleep. Sebastian rolls over to turn off the lamp, and slides under the blanket, turning his back to his sleeping partner.  
A moment later, Joseph starts wiggling and grunting, and Sebastian feels the mattress collapsing under the younger man’s body.  
Joseph has rolled on his side and is resting his head between Sebastian’s shoulder blades.  
The older man stills, tensing up and holding his breath.  
He can feel Joseph’s soft and profound inhale-exhale tickling his skin, light as a feather.  
Without thinking, his arm reaches back to grab one of Joseph’s hands.

 

 

 


	18. Day Twenty-Seven

On the twenty-seventh day back, Sebastian gets out of the doctor’s office with a prescription for pills he doesn’t remember the name. They’re supposed to help him manage his anxiety and eventually the withdrawal symptoms if they manifest. He just nodded along as the doctor spoke. He’s empty.

Last night was not a good night. He still feels Ruvik’s nails digging into the flesh of his throat, the raspy scream of that spider woman ringing between his ears, Joseph’s distorted, bloody face dancing like a fire behind his eyelids, and Lily, Lily, dancing in the fire, her body burning like puppet of fabric.  
Last night was not a good night.  
When he managed to pull his head above the deep dark sea of his nightmares, Joseph was already reaching out to pull him into the lifeboat.  
Sebastian clinged to the man, his whole body weighted by the viscidity of the waters, and found himself wheezing, sobbing uncontrollably, digging his nails in Joseph’s arms to pull him closer.  
Lily’s voice haunted him for three more hours, and Sebastian saw her face in his coffee.  
He broke down crying in the shower, and Joseph had to pull his miserable body out of under the water and wrap him in a towel.  
Not a good night. Not a good day.

 

He went to the doctor.  
His assistant’s name, written on her chest, was “Mary”. Sebastian read “Myra”, and held his tears back until his eyes burned with the salted water, everything he was able to build crumbling in his chest like a card castle blown away by the wind, and he broke down crying, a second time, when he closed the car door after him.

When he had cried everything he could, Joseph drove him to the pharmacy, then to the chinese restaurant with the delicious Peking duck.

“Everything is gone,” Sebastian said, voice flat, eyes empty, between to shrimp chips.  
“What do you mean ?”  
“All the progress I made. Getting better. Pulling myself back together. It’s gone.”

Joseph looked at him with a very soft, empathetic look, nipping at his lower lip. He seemed to search for something adequate to say, then put a gloved hand on Sebastian’s arm in a friendly but firm gesture.

“You were able to get through it once, you can do it again. You learned tricks to get better. You can use them. You can talk to your therapist.”

He offered an encouraging smile that almost made Sebastian let his bite fall out of his mouth as it fell open in a surprised awe.

“And also –”, he adds, “ – I’m here.”

His smile widened and Sebastian has to sit deeper in his chair.

“I’m your partner. You can count on me.”

Sebastian nodded.  
Joseph promptly pulled his arm back when a waiter brought them their plates.

 

Now, Sebastian is doing intense research on Joseph’s computer, obsessively looking for that one song, while Joseph is in the shower.  
He types, searches, word after word, ‘piano song’, ‘classical piano song’, ‘classical music piano’, until he finds it.  
He starts the video, increases the sound.  
The song.  
_The_ song.  
He lays back and relax, letting the notes wash over him like warm, delicate waves of a crystal-clear sea.  
Joseph walks into the room, a towel over his shoulders, brushing his wet hair out of in front of his eyes.

“Oh ? Is that Clair de Lune ?”

Sebastian turns to him, smiling.

“You know this song ?”  
“My childhood best friend knew how to play it,” the younger man says as he comes to sit next to his partner.  
“There was this song, back to that goddamn hell,” Sebastian explains, his teeth gritting at the last part, “always in places where I was safe. In rooms where I couldn’t get hurt.”  
“You had… places where you were safe ?”, Joseph asks, his voice hushed and a little croaky.

Sebastian turns to him to see his partner with a mix of sadness, shock and disappointment painted on his face. The older man starts wondering before the answer comes crashing in his face : Joseph was never safe.  
There was nowhere he could rest.  
No soft song according him some respite.  
Nowhere to hide.  
Sebastian suddenly feels incredibly guilty. He should have known.

Joseph seems to have read his mind, because he’s gently patting his back, a sweet smile on his lips.

“Hey. We’re safe now. We’re safe.”

He then asks Sebastian to increase the volume.  
He sits more comfortably next to his partner and lays his head, wet hair tickling the older man’s skin, on Sebastian’s shoulder.

 

 

 


	19. Day Twenty-Nine (Road To Redemption)

On the twenty-ninth day back, Sebastian is prescribed some blue, round pills and white capsules.  
It’s 8:53 in the evening and the two men are standing in the kitchen, waiting for the hot water of their chamomile to cool down. Joseph is cautiously arranging his medications in his hand and Sebastian rolling his between his fingers.

“So, what did she give you ?” Joseph asks.  
“Neuroleptic and antidepressant,” his partner answers. “It feels like I should've been on those a long time ago,” he jokes.

Joseph laughs a little, his lips locking in a smile. He leans against the counter and blows on his drink to cool it, the steam climbing up his face to completely fod his glasses. Sebastian hears him curse and laughs.  
He observes his younger partner stirring the pills in his hands, taking in everything he can.  
The way his loose hair falls in front of his eyes and curls in the crook of his neck, the soft and tiny smile that draws lines at the corners of his mouth.

Realization starts creeping on Sebastian before cascading on his shoulders and down his back like warm water, letting the man emerge from a weeks-long torpor like a diver rising from deep dark waters.  
Suddenly, he realizes he’s sharing an apartment and a life with a partner that’s currently nonchalantly half-sitting on the counter, in his boxer briefs and one of Sebastian’s t-shirt that slips off his shoulder, revealing his pale, milky skin. They’re closer than they’ve ever been, closer than the times Sebastian had playfully slapped Joseph’s ass in the common showers full of voices and his loud laugh, closer than all the times Joseph had to untangle his clothes from his drunken limbs, closer than when his partner had to rub the smell of alcohol off his skin, hell, closer than the times, just days ago, when they were clinging onto each other in a desperate embrace, and even closer again.

The man thinks of what their relationship was before they went through that hell, and what it was now.  
A lot has changed in ways he’d never have expected. It is a lot to take in, but Sebastian doesn’t mind.

“So,” Sebastian begins, clearing his throat. “Lots of things are said about those meds, lots of nasty things, but I do hope they’ll help us, and with their help we’d function normally again,” he declares.  
“I think it’s a step towards recovery,” Joseph announces. “We’re getting help.”  
“Mmh,” his partner hums, acquiescing, “help from the meds, from the therapist –”  
“From each other,” the younger man interrupts.

Sebastian can only nod. He raises his mug in a toast.

“So, to us ?”  
“To us,” Joseph repeats, imitating him.

They swallow their pills whole with a gulp of tea.  
The sweetness of the herb makes up for the bitter meds, and the honey they dissolved in their drink slides down their throat in a sugary caress.  
Out of the corner of his eye, Sebastian sees Joseph’s pinky finger intentionally brush against his.  
The older man moves his hand ever-so-slightly just so more of his fingers meet the warmth of Joseph’s hand.  
Something even sweeter than honey.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey there. this is the end of Out Of Hell And Into The Light, and soon shall come Road To Redemption. Stay tuned~★ and thank you so much for reading ! i hope you enjoyed these two !


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